Kirk-Holden War: Desperate Diseases Require Desperate Remedies

In 1870 Governor William Woods Holden of North Carolina put the Shoffner Act into effect which gave him the ability to use military power in select counties under states of insurrection. The governor was given the authority to decide when these counties would be in states of insurrection, which implied that civil authority was not strong enough to keep the peace and had therefore failed. This paper will discuss how the violence in several counties across North Carolina escalated to the point that called for the Schoffner Act to be put into place and how necessary it was to implement.